Corrupted Chapter 5

by Tyree, Omar

Darlene starred at him as if she didn’t know what else to say. “Well . . . that’s good, right? I mean, at least he looked at it.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t call my work the next big thing,” he hinted. “So, you go in there and knock him dead. I’ll follow behind you later.”

  She quickly nodded again. “Okay.”

  As soon as they headed their separate ways, Antonio exhaled. “Whew, I dodged that bullet.”

  Darlene walked away feeling trepidation herself. Vincent hadn’t given a critique of her work at all. In fact, he hadn’t said anything about her manuscript, as if he hadn’t read it yet. He only spoke to her about the industry. That made her nervous. What if he read it later on and hated it?

  All of a sudden, her outfit didn’t make her feel so confident anymore But as she approached the Williams & Klein booth for a second day in a row, Lauren Grandeis spotted her first and immediately eased her fears.

  “Now that’s how a New York Times best-selling author should dress,” she claimed.

  In a flash, all of their eyes were fixed on her, including Vincent, Thomas and Arnold.

  “Hey Darlene, I heard you guys had a great night on the town last night,” Vincent hinted. “And nice dress,” he added. However, the damage had already been done.

  Darlene froze and was curious as to how he knew. Everything else became secondary.

  “You were there?” she asked him, surprised again.

  “No, but I heard about it.”

  All she could think about was Brittney as a rival editor at Impact Publishing.

  “Well, who dressed you this morning?” Lauren asked, distracting her. “Do you have a personal stylist?”

  “No, my mother taught me how to dress. Although I didn’t have that many opportunities in Denver,” she quipped.

  Thomas, Arnold and the rest of the staff were all listening.

  “Well, a great dress code sure will help with the media,” Arnold commented. “What do you think, Lauren?”

  “Oh, you know it already. She’d become part of the New York fashionista. I could get her tickets to fashion events immediately. They would just love her down in the district; a young intelligent muse who can dress.”

  With her naturally tanned complexion, good looks and respected style, Lauren had always been invited back to the fashion district herself. But Darlene wasn’t expecting all of her hoopla. She was a bit leery of Lauren’s propaganda. Maybe her wealthy dress code and big time talk was how she hyped everyone up to sign with her. Nothing was sold in New York for free.

  “I don’t know about all of that,” Darlene commented, backing down. She was still thinking about Vincent, actually. How did he know about the nightclub scene? Did he ask Tony about it? However, she couldn’t bring that up without letting on that she knew Antonio more than what Vincent thought. Her mind was all a big mess now.

  “Do you plan to move to New York?” Thomas asked her next.

  Lauren cringed and said, “Oh, she would have to,” as if it were a foregone conclusion. “Why waste so much talent out in Denver.”

  She was speaking as if Darlene was not even there, and the aspiring author didn’t know how she felt about all of it. She loved New York, but was still ready to defend her home.

  Vincent spoke up and said, “Are you sure you can tie her in with New York’s elite?”

  Lauren looked back at him and said, “I’m certain. She’s five times more polished than you know who, and you see what I was able to do for him. So just imagine how far I could take her.”

  Vincent looked at Darlene and then to his two bosses, as if he were ready to confirm her publishing deal based on Lauren’s dedication to work with her.

  Arnold was the first to speak on it. “Well, we’ll have to see.”

  That was his obvious code language for working the numbers. Everything would have to make sense on the deal, and that meant dollars and cents.

  Darlene continued to be overwhelmed by it all. She didn’t know which way was up anymore.

  “Well, have you guys seen any other new authors today?” she asked them all anxiously, to get the subject off of herself. She also wanted to see if they would bring up Antonio.

  But Lauren didn’t even understand the question. “Who cares? It’s all about you now. You have to learn to accept the moment or you’ll miss it.”

  Darlene had heard about enough of her. The woman was too brash for her tastes and getting worse by the minute. She was as pushy as Chelsea Christmas had been.

  Is this how you have to be to be a best-seller? No, she concluded to herself. That’s just not me.

  Before she got down to the bottom of Vincent’s knowledge of her nightclub visit, Antonio made his way over to their direction as promised.

  “Hey, Darlene,” he called out to her. “What’s going on? Great outfit.”

  Everyone looked at him now, as if he had no business even speaking to her.

  But Darlene grinned and spoke back to him. “Hey Antonio, what are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you’re doing here; I’m trying to get published,” he cracked.

  Vincent eyed both of them and kept his thoughts to himself.

  So evidently, she’d rather hang out with him instead of with Jackson, he assumed. And they seem to be very comfortable around each other.

  As if reading Vincent’s mind, Lauren jumped right in on their combined chemistry.

  “You know, marketing you two together would be a bargain.”

  Antonio heard that and laughed out loud. He said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Arnold Dutch asked him. “Who are you?” He felt as if he was missing something.

  “Antonio Martinez. I write werewolf stories.”

  Not knowing any better, he stepped up and shook the boss’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” Arnold told him cordially.

  “Werewolf stories?” Lauren repeated. She then looked to Vincent and the other Williams & Klein editors. “Is that the next new thing?”

  “Apparently, but we have yet to see the numbers on it,” someone answered.

  Vincent continued to hold his tongue. He was still thinking. Yeah, I’ll need to figure this all out, he mused. I’ll need a couple of days back in the office first.

  On cue, Thomas Richberg gave him an eye as if to ask him what he was thinking about.

  Vincent grinned sheepishly and shrugged it off. There will we be no wine until it’s time, he thought. And if my career is riding on new acquisitions, then it’ll be my call and my call only.

  Jackson Smith decided to walk to the Jacob Javits Center from his hotel in Times Square instead of catching a taxi. What was the use in catching a taxi less than ten blocks, especially when he was extra early? It was only twelve o’clock and his signing wasn’t until two. So he opted to suck up the afternoon sun and nice weather on a casual walk.

  By the time he hit Eighth Avenue, not more than a block away, someone noticed him in his all black again, with no blazer. The color black matched his casual sensibilities, and he could get away with wearing it to any function.

  “Haaayyy, Jackson Smith! I love your work!”

  It was a taxi driver hanging out of his window, a gray-beard, older white man.

  Jackson smiled, nodded and waved to him. “Thanks.”

  But the taxi driver wasn’t finished. He said, “Hey, you need a ride somewhere? It’s on me.”

  Jackson waved him off. “Nah, I’m only headed to the Javits Center. I could use this walk.”

  “Oh, yeah, for the ah, book stuff going on in town.”

  “Yeah, the BEA,” Jackson informed him.

  “Well, good luck. And keep writing those books. How ’bout writing one about a New York City taxi driver?” the man joked, laughing heartily.

  It had been done a million times before, or at least it seemed that way to Jackson from all of the New City movies involving taxis. Then you had the HBO show, “Taxi Cab Confessions.” Nevertheless, Jackson had been well schooled to bul
lshit his fanbase.

  “Aw’ight, I’ll think about that,” he lied.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, new ideas come from everywhere. You can never turn down a good story.”

  That got the taxi driver even more excited. “Well, hell, in that case I got plenty of them.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Jackson told him, grinning. He was still walking forward as the taxi driver paced slowly beside him in the street. He even popped on his hazard lights to caution the drivers who were speeding behind him.

  “Well, do you mind if I give you my business card?”

  Without hesitation, Jackson walked right out into the street to retrieve it from it. He said, “It’s not a problem.”

  “Hey, I was ready to get out and walk to you,” the driver told him

  “Yeah, but I was quicker.”

  “Well, my name is Bill Conrad. And I’m originally from Buffalo.”

  They shook hands at the window.

  “Nice to meet you, Bill.”

  “Nah, it’s nice to meet you. I wish I had one of your books for you to sign.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” Jackson told him. “I’m getting ready to do a signing now. Maybe I’ll keep a few copies for ya’.”

  The taxi driver’s eyes popped open. “Now, wow, that would be great!”

  Jackson continued to grin and walked away from the cab with the man’s business card in hand just as swiftly as he had arrived. “Don’t mention it,” he commented.

  “Well, have a good day,” the taxi driver concluded as he headed up the street for the next customer at the corner.

  Jackson grinned, knowing that he had made the man’s day. It was good to be nice to the fans. And if they never saw him or spoke to him again in their lives, they would all hold positive memories of him that would last a lifetime.

  “That felt pretty good,” Jackson told himself. He hadn’t even broken his stride to do it. So when he arrived at the front entrance of the Javits Center, he still had a positive bounce in his step. And he walked right into Lauren Grandeis, who was just leaving.

  She stretched her eyes wide and looked for a car at the curb behind him, but there was none.

  “Did you walk?” she asked him, appalled.

  Jackson had beads of sweat popping from of his forehead. He wiped them away with his hand. “Yeah, I felt like walking. The hotel’s only a few blocks from here.”

  “But we ordered a car to come and get you.”

  Jackson frowned and waved it off. “I don’t need a car to walk a few blocks. I could see if it was raining or if I was running late or something. But I’m more than hour early and it’s sunshine out.”

  “Jesus Christ!” she expressed to him wearily.

  Jackson joked and said, “I thought you would follow Buddah.”

  Lauren didn’t laugh. “That’s not funny. I’m only using figures of speech here, and in America they believe in Jesus.”

  Jackson thought about that and wondered what she did believe in outside of imagery, money and the moment. That was all that Lauren seemed to talk about. Every now and then she would complain about her family, but not often enough to know much about them. All that Jackson knew for sure was that she had a mother, a father and two brothers. He didn’t even know if they lived in America full-time with how she switched back and forth in her conversations about India. She even spoke about London a few times. But she would rarely elaborate with the details of her life. Her work was all about everyone else.

  “Anyway, I’m here now. And early. So let me go hang out with the guys,” Jackson told her.

  In his dark outfit, minus his black leather blazer, Jackson was overheated from his little nature walk. Lauren could suddenly feel the heat emitting from his pores as he walked by her, making him seem hot and musty.

  She cringed and thought, God, I can’t wait to work with Darlene. She would never do something like this. Now he’s gonna be all wet and clammy at his signing. Who walks out in the hot sun before they do a public event? He obviously still has a lot of training to do.

  “Okay, well, have a good one,” she said as she waved him forward. There was nothing left that she could do, and she had her own tight schedule to keep. “I’ll check back on you later.”

  Jackson nodded and grumbled, “All right,” as he kept it moving toward the escalators. And as soon as he reached them, a familiar face and voice greeted him.

  “Hey Jackson.” It was Claudia Denson, a young assistant editor from Random House. She was still cute as a button in her new shoulder length hair cut. She had reached the escalators right before he did and rode it down in front of him.

  “Haaay, Claudia, nice to see you here. What have you been up to?”

  Jackson had rolled in the hay with her during the BEA festivities in Washington, DC a few years ago. And he was stunned as ever to see her pop right up in front of him. But it wasn’t as if they had remained in touch with each other.

  She showed him a ring on her finger and said, “I got married.”

  Everything stopped in the room for a second.

  “Oh,” Jackson mumbled awkwardly. I guess she wanted to kill that conversation, he thought to himself. “So, ah . . . how long has it been?”

  “Almost a year now.”

  Jackson nodded. “Okay. Well, congratulations. Are you still at Random House?”

  She turned to show him her Random House badge with a smile.

  “I see,” he told her. He didn’t know what else to say. “How old are you now, twenty-, twenty-seven?”

  She frowned and said, “Twenty? No, I’m twenty-nine now. I wasn’t that young,” she hinted. “You just wanted me to be.”

  “Well, you still look that young,” he joked, embarrassed by her insinuation. He remembered her being young, but he didn’t mean to say twenty. Claudia was likely around the same age as Susan back then.

  He said, “I didn’t mean to say twenty, it just kind of ah, slipped out that way.”

  Claudia shook her head and continued to grin as they reached the bottom. She turned back and whispered to him, “If that’s a Freudian slip, I’d watch myself with the young ones if I were you.”

  Then she spoke at a normal volume. “So, are you married yet, with kids or anything?” She knew the answer to that already.

  Jackson shook it off anyway and moaned, “Nooo, not the kid.”

  “Well, how old are you, thirty-five now?” she asked him, hinting at family time. She already knew the answer to that too.

  Instead of confirming his age, Jackson cut through the chase as the stepped off the escalators. “Are you ah, trying to tell me something?”

  She smiled. “Am I? What did you do last night?” she hinted again. Jackson’s M.O. was an open book to every young woman in the industry. And at events like the BEA, it was very easy for them to gather around and compare notes.

  All of a sudden, Jackson had lost his good mood, replaced by paranoia.